


The End of Something

by Angela



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 06:52:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16718452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angela/pseuds/Angela
Summary: After the end of the manga, Yut-Lung has to come to terms with what he's done and who he's become, and how his feelings for Ash Lynx were not at all what he'd thought they were. A surviving family member unintentionally helps him gain perspective, even as his relationship with Sing seems to be completely shattered.Major spoilers to the end of the series!!





	The End of Something

Yut Lung’s head hurt like someone had buried an ice pick behind his eyes. He sat in the back seat of the town car, watching through tinted windows as guests gathered beneath the Bleeker Street awning and then disappeared through the glass doors. He knew most of their faces, even if he couldn’t be bothered to know their names. 

He didn’t realize he was watching for one person in particular until it became obvious that he wasn’t going to show. Could he still be Japan? But no – Yut Lung couldn’t imagine Eiji Okumura willing to be anywhere else but right there that day.

Not Yut Lung. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Greenwich Village. He wanted to be in bed with a bottle of wine. But there he was, nonetheless.

His breath fogged the window – the sky outside was dark and grey. It was cold for May. It matched his mood, reminding him of San Francisco winters and the way the fog would cling in his hair. 

Not that Yut Lung missed the west coast. San Francisco was nothing but solitude. Apart from his tutors, the only people he ever saw were servants. Unless one of his brothers came to see him.

He closed his eyes, one hand on his forehead as though he could somehow massage the pain from his eyebrows. Why couldn’t he think of that, of his brothers or even of San Francisco, without almost physically hearing the tear of fabric, the pant of labored breath in his ear? They hadn’t come often; he had nearly seventeen years of memory to tap into, and yet he came back to that every time.

He was suddenly afraid he might throw up.

Almost ten minutes had passed since the last person went through those doors. If he was going to do this, now was the time. 

_If_ he was going to do this.

He wouldn’t be welcome in there, and with good reason. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least if those barbarians Ash ran with carried weapons even today. He knew for a fact that Sing didn’t leave the house without his rope-dart-flying-dragon-whatever. Yut Lung had no interest in having a roomful of guns and other deadly weapons aimed at him. 

Maybe he should just go home.

But wouldn’t that just become yet another regret? A tight pain across his chest mirrored the throb in his head. He recognized it as the kind of ache that got worse if he tried to ignore it. The kind that woke him from a dead sleep, the kind that stabbed any time it felt like there was even a possibility that he could be happy.

He’d thought that killing the Lees was the answer. He thought that maybe a war of attrition against them would be enough to put the ache to rest. Maybe someday, even silence his mother’s screams in his head. But suddenly there was a new pain to contend with – he hadn’t counted on losing Ash Lynx.

Even as he thought it, Yut Lung knew it was a lie. Of course he’d counted on that. He’d laid the groundwork himself, put the fear into Lao, twisted it. What he hadn’t counted on was how it would make him feel.

Yut Lung felt like he’d murdered a part of his own self.

He took a deep breath and opened the car door. His first steps were unsteady, his migraine throbbing as he crossed the busy street, but by the time he reached the blue awning, he had conquered his gait. He lifted his chin and reached for the door, tossing his hair over one shoulder, schooling his face into an expression of serenity. 

He needed a drink. A Valium. Something to dull the sharp noise and pain. Anything that didn’t feel like regret.

*

He lingered half behind an oversize fern in the back of the hall, sunglasses on and hair loose around his shoulders. To the casual observer, he could be a woman, some timid admirer arriving late and leaving early, easily overlooked and forgotten.

But there were no casual observers in that room, Yut Lung immediately realized. 

The police officers were the biggest surprise – the short, balding chief and the ginger-haired detective. They sat with Max Lobo and his family. Shunichi Ibe was across the aisle, looking grim and tired despite a shave and a crisply pressed suit. 

It looked like Ash’s entire gang was there, their hair combed and their faces somber. A few had scrounged up suit jackets, a couple wore ties, but most were in the same denim jackets and ripped jeans they usually wore. His lieutenant with the sharp cheekbones – Ash’s successor, Yut Lung knew, though it was strange to think that way – sat stiffly in his chair, his face grim.

Cain Blood sat alone, his broad back tense, at attention. He wore a black leather jacket, his sunglasses respectfully tucked into the breast pocket. Nearby, Sing leaned forward in his seat, full of nervous energy even there, even then. He’d brought two of his Chinatown boys along, and they sat three rows behind the detectives – keeping close to Nadia Wong, Yut Lung saw. He’d missed her before, but she leaned against her cop boyfriend, who wrapped a protective arm around her. Her shoulders shook in silent sobs. Against his will, Yut Lung remembered her brother, and the pain in his head spiked, making his queasy stomach churn.

A familiar puff of jet-black hair pulled Yut Lung onto his tiptoes for a better look. Eiji Okumura was there after all. The young Japanese man was still in a wheelchair, parked in the very front. He sat stone-still, even when Ibe leaned in to make some comment. He looked small, helpless in the chair and swamped in his navy blue suit.

Yut Lung had been imagining Eiji full of tears and impotent fury, all the way across the world in Japan. He wondered who had given him the news, how quickly he’d booked a flight back to New York. Had he doubted? Disbelieved entirely like he had before? Yut Lung studied the stiff, unyielding column of his neck. Did he refuse to believe it even now with the evidence lying right in front of his face?

Max Lobo stumbled up to the podium. He talked about Ash’s older brother, read a poem. His voice broke halfway through. He called Ash his son and the whole room broke down. Stone cold killers side-by-side with cops, all crying like little boys – except Eiji.

The ramrod straight set of his shoulders didn’t waver. His head didn’t bow. Yut Lung knew that this was when the hate should well up inside of him; he waited for it, wanted it to consume him and eat away all the other things that twisted themselves into agony inside him. But Ash’s golden image burned the back of his eyes, sucking all the oxygen from the room until he had to gasp for breath. Somehow, Yut Lung was even more broken than before. Somehow Ash managed even this. 

He wanted to see. To see Ash’s body, to recognize him. It suddenly felt like he wouldn’t ever get past that moment unless he could verify with his own eyes that it was Ash Lynx lying in that wooden box. There were nearly twenty people perched on the velvet-cushioned chairs, and every one of them had a good reason for wanting him dead, but he stepped forward nonetheless.

His footfall was silent, but Sing noticed. His dark head whipped around, his eyes widening with shock before narrowing into furious slits. He had Yut Lung by the arm, yanking him into the hallway and then an adjoining vestibule before anyone so much as glanced back toward them.

“What the fuck are _you_ doing here?” he hissed. 

Yut Lung managed not to wince. He was used to being treated like an invasive species. Sing’s grip on his arm was fierce, though. He tugged free, a little surprised when Sing let him go like a hot potato. He took a moment to compose himself, smoothing the handprint from his velvet sleeve and breathing deeply to calm his racing pulse. When he was certain he could do it without his hands shaking, he tossed his hair over his shoulder and gave Sing his most haughty look.

“It’s a public funeral,” he said, keeping his voice even. “I have every right –”

“Don’t say another word.” He’d never seen Sing look so genuinely threatening before. 

Yut Lung fell silent, but Sing just stared up at him, his breath hard and angry. Yut Lung shook his head, lifted both hands in a gesture of exaggerated confusion. “If you have nothing to say,” he began, turning away to head back into the funeral hall.

“Don’t.” Sing grabbed his wrist, yanked him back. It actually hurt. Yut Lung was startled. Sing usually put on a good show, but his follow-through was weak. He’d expected a lecture, not an actual threat.

He straightened his posture, standing as tall as he could. His face was twisted into a snarl of fury. “Every guy in there would kill you in a second. And right now, I’m inclined to let them.”

A laugh bubbled out of Yut Lung’s throat. “Let them?” he asked. “I hadn’t realized you were in charge of my personal safety.” He struggled to yank free, failing.

Sing’s eyes narrowed. His grip tightened, nearly strong enough to crack the narrow bones in Yut Lung’s wrist. “I might be the only person alive who gives a damn about you,” Sing growled through clenched teeth. Yut Lung felt a peculiar sensation beneath his ribs, a flutter of something queasy and light. “But right now, I’m not exactly feeling it.” 

Yut Lung’s breath caught in his throat. He could feel the genuine shock exposed on his face, but he couldn’t find the muscles to smooth it out. He gaped at Sing, unable to process this open rage.

“So get out of here,” Sing threatened in a low voice. “Just leave. Let us say goodbye to Ash.” His voice cracked on the name and he blinked fast. “None of us want to deal with his murderer today.”

*

The second time Ash Lynx died, there was no headline, no blurb on the nightly news. The whole world believed he’d been dead for months, after all. Yut Lung found out when Sing came to him, crying and raging like a furious child.

He heard the commotion in the hall first – the low murmur of his men turning threatening. He sat up then, putting his book on the chaise next to him and slipping his feet into his shoes. Almost as important as not being caught off-guard was _looking like_ you weren’t caught off-guard. 

“Get your goddamn hands off me!” Sing’s insolent voice came almost at the same moment he kicked the door open, splintering the doorjamb. Two of Yut Lung’s men held him by the arms, but his legs flailed dangerously and his face was all wild virulence. “Tell your goons to lemme go!” he demanded.

Yut Lung sighed. He made a quick hand motion and the guards dumped Sing unceremoniously onto the carpet. “Leave us,” Yut Lung instructed. They pulled the door imperfectly closed behind them and he turned to Sing. “What is it now?” he asked mildly.

Sing was on all fours, breathless from his struggle. He looked up, and Yut Lung was startled by the venom in his glare. “What the fuck do you think?” he asked, his voice a sharp weapon.

An icy premonition worked its way up Yut Lung’s spine. Sing’s shirt was bloody. Old blood. Dried. His eyes were veined red with dark, sallow circles beneath. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.” It was hard to keep his voice light. He’d never seen Sing like that, and he’d seen him after a lot of pretty nasty fights.

It took a moment for Sing to pull himself to his feet, long enough to ascertain that he wasn’t badly hurt, if at all. Any relief was overshadowed by Sing’s scowl. He looked at Yut Lung like he was the lowest kind of traitor. “I don’t know what’s worse,” Sing said at last, his voice low, unsteady. “That you pulled such a lowdown, dirty stunt or that I’m actually _surprised_ by it.”

“Which dirty stunt do you mean?” Yut Lung asked. “There have been so many?”

“How can you joke about this?” Suddenly the rage in Sing’s face shifted, his chin trembling and his eyes wet with tears held barely in check. “How could you not see that I would lose _both of them?_ ”

Yut Lung’s spine stiffened. The feeling of foreboding became an overwhelming sense of doom. This wasn’t just Sing flying off the handle about some barely-significant detail. “Who?” he asked, though he wasn’t sure it was loud enough to be heard.

Sing continued, unchecked. “I thought we were – I mean, at the very least, we were starting to be –” He sputtered out, one gloved fist flying out to knock a vase from a shelf. “Goddamn it!”

 _Friends._ That was the world Sing wouldn’t say, the word Yut Lung couldn’t even consider. Not like that, with Sing in tears, his whole body shaking with rage and grief. “Who?” he asked again. An ache was building in his chest because he knew. He _knew_ , but needed to hear it out loud.

“Lao.” 

Of course. Yut Lung had planted that seed weeks before. He hadn’t been positive anything would come of it – Sing had tight control of his gang, and his brother – but he’d tended it carefully. His backup plan, his revenge. “What did Lao do?” he asked softly.

Sing looked at the floor. “ _Someone_ convinced him to go after Ash Lynx,” he spat. “I assume he thought he was protecting me, but I told him we were cool. I told him Ash was –” Again, his words faltered. He looked up at Yut Lung, his dark eyes fiery. “ _Someone_ told him otherwise.” 

Yut Lung blinked slowly, reminding his body to inhale, to exhale, to disregard the panic and chaos that frayed the edges of his calm. “Ash Lynx?” he prompted, needing to hear it, needing to know.

The laugh that bubbled out of Sing was devoid of humor. It sounded mad, hysterical. “You wanna know what happened to Ash Lynx?” he asked, his voice pitching high and a bit too loud. “You wanna hear how he shot my brother and left him to die like a dog on the sidewalk?” He kicked over an end table, sending a decanter of gin crashing against the marble fireplace. “Or are you more interested in the fact that Lao nicked him first? That he fucking bled to death in the goddamn library?”

Another end table crashed. He toppled a chair with one heavy boot. Then he turned to Yut Lung, his wild gaze focusing. With a wordless cry, he swung his clenched fist, and Yut Lung closed his eyes, flinching back in spite of himself.

The wall behind him crumpled beneath Sing’s blow. It was close enough that Yut Lung felt the air move past his ear, felt the plaster dust scatter across the back of his neck. “You’re a monster!” Sing howled, cradling his fist in his left hand. “It was all over! It was done and we were gonna figure out how to be normal again!”

Yut Lung backed up, pressing his back against the wall. He shook his head, unable to calm Sing, unable to do anything at all except look at the horror he’d created. He couldn’t; he looked away. “I didn’t –” But there wasn’t an honest way to continue that sentence. There wasn’t a way to make this better.

Ash Lynx was dead.

“You fucked it all up!” Sing’s rage was everywhere, in the broken glass, the plaster, the knot of pain blooming in Yut Lung’s chest. Consuming it. And then he was crying. Sing. Yut Lung. It wasn’t clear which, or both, but Yut Lung slumped onto the floor and Sing was leaving. Swearing he’d never come back. Swearing blood and vengeance. 

Ash Lynx was dead and the whole goddamn world exploded.

*

On Yut Lung’s order, the car didn’t take him straight home. Instead they drove aimlessly; he stared out the window at the city that still seemed unfamiliar, even after living there for months. He didn’t want go back to his brother’s house, to be surrounded by his brother’s things. Now that the Lees had been destroyed, it all belonged to Yut Lung, yet he still felt like a visitor in a life that wasn’t – had never been – his own. Had it been the same for Ash? Living in Golzine’s mansion, eating his food, wearing the clothes Golzine chose for him? 

He thought about that apartment Ash shared with Eiji Okumura. Was that home, or just another meaningless place to lay his head for a time? What was it that made a thing truly yours, anyway? Yut Lung wasn’t sure he’d ever know. 

His head hurt so much he wanted to die. He knew he should just go home, that going to bed for a few hours, maybe even a few days, was the only cure. When the movement of the car became too much, he told the driver to stop at East River Park. By then it was too drizzly to get out, but he rolled down the window, longing for air and an unobstructed view of the Williamsburg Bridge and the boxy grey of Brooklyn beyond.

 _I might be the only person alive who gives a damn about you._

Fog gathered thick over the water – just like San Francisco. No one gave a damn about him there, either, though a few of the servants who raised him at least put up a pretense. Yut thought of Ash Lynx. Ever since that first night in Los Angeles, he’d been watching Ash, trying to get some reaction – any reaction – out of him. He’d thought they were the same, but somehow Ash ended up with a funeral full of people who cried real tears for him. People who would miss him, regret that he was gone.

He didn’t realize he was crying until the tears splashed onto his fingers. He hadn’t been able to get a reaction out of Ash after all. Not one he wanted. Instead, Eiji Okumura got everything. Yut Lung wondered if he realized that – that he could only lose everything because he was the one to have it all. 

Again, he waited for the familiar loathing, that blinding rage that always scrubbed away anything soft, anything weak, and again he was left disappointed. His hate was gone, leaving him empty. Empty with his sorrow. His regret. Yut Lung buried his face in his hands, ashamed of the hiccuping sobs that consumed him.

*

Yut Lung stayed in bed for two days, nursing first his headache and then his Cabernet collection. The announcement of a young visitor finally roused him from his indolence. He twisted his hair into a loose knot at the base of his neck and slid into a pair of satin slippers. He’d expected Sing to hold out longer; it was almost disappointing.

But when he got to the staircase landing, it wasn’t Sing’s scowling face looking up at him. Instead, it was a little kid – a girl, judging by her skirt and long braids. She had her arms wrapped around her body, her face turned down to her shoes. She was small. Yut Lung was far from expert at discerning the ages of children, but he thought she was maybe nine or ten.

She looked up when she heard him on the stairs. For an instant, her eyes widened, her face went slack with surprise. It took only a moment, though, for her expression to rearrange itself into something peaceful, something gentle. She bowed her head respectfully, letting her eyes flit downward. Her arms fell to her sides, her clenched hands going deliberately slack.

“Who are you?” Yut Lung asked shortly. He’d never known any children and he wasn’t really in the mood to indulge one now. “What do you want?”

The girl’s eyes flitted up to his and she bowed, exactly the way Yut Lung had been trained as a child. “Esteemed Youngest Uncle,” she began in Cantonese. “I am Lee Shen Lai, your late brother’s daughter. I have traveled from Chicago to see you, and my need is most urgent.” It was clearly a rehearsed speech. Her Cantonese was good, but lacked the smooth musicality of someone who made it their primary language.

Yut Lung raised one eyebrow. He leaned on the railing of the staircase, partly because it looked so casual, but also because his knees were suddenly weak. Chicago. That would mean she was the daughter of Wei Lung, his third brother. 

That also meant that she was supposed to be dead. They were all supposed to be dead. Golzine had said it was done.

“I prefer English,” he told her, trying to keep his voice dry. This girl unsettled him, scared him almost. Like a creature returned from the grave. He walked past her to the blue sitting room. She followed after only the smallest hesitation – Yut Lung had to admire that. “Now,” he said, sitting on the sofa and motioning for her to take a chair. “Tell me why you’ve come all this way to see me.”

She sat with her back straight, perched on the edge of the seat. Her feet didn’t even touch the floor. She held his gaze for a long moment, unsettling from a little girl, then, in a gesture of demure submission, she lowered her eyes to her clasped hands. “You must know,” she began, her voice shaking. She took a breath, visibly steadying herself. “Things are very bad in the family.”

It was a vast ocean of understatement. Yut Lung only waited for her to continue.

“Some months ago, my mother was murdered. My brother and sister, too.” This had a rehearsed quality as well. Yut Lung understood – these were the sort of words someone rolled endlessly in their mind, grinding and polishing until they were perfectly smooth, until all their sharp edges were rubbed away, turning horror into mere statement. 

“I have heard,” Yut Lung told her. It came out more softly than he’d meant, and he clamped his mouth closed once more.

“I was spared because I was away, on a trip to London with my school.”

Yut Lung’s first, fleeting feeling was relief. She had not stood by as her mother was killed; she had not been forced to watch, helpless, as the life drained out of her. He remembered too well his own mother’s grip on his hand growing weaker as the puddle of dark blood beneath her body grew. He could still feel the hot dampness growing cold under his knees, smell the metallic reek of it. 

But this girl. Panic clambered inside him, yanking itself through his spine and into his brain. This girl was a Lee – the blood heir to the monsters who killed his mother.

“How old are you?” he demanded sharply.

Shen Lai started, nearly jumping from her spot on the chair. “I – I’m eleven,” she said.

It was possible she hadn’t even been born then, he realized. But it didn’t matter. Blood was blood and it had to be scrubbed clean. “Why did you come to me?” he asked her.

She swallowed hard, clenching her hands into fists in her lap. “You are my only family,” she told him slowly, as though he should already understand that. “And I need,” she paused, seeming to need a moment to gather the courage to ask, “I need your help.”

A jolt of something like hysteria coursed through him and Yut Lung was startled to find tears pricking the corners of his eyes. She needed his help? He wanted to laugh, but was terrified that, if he let out any sound at all, it would be some kind of wail.

But Shen Lai didn’t wait for his reaction. She stood, pacing to the window and back. Her nervous energy reminded him of Sing; he wasn’t sure whether or not that made him like her less. “I want revenge,” the girl said at last, turning to face him, her eyes blazing. “I know who killed my mother. I know and I won’t rest until I see him dead.”

He recognized her hate, understood the fire and destruction that burned behind her words. He’d been half her age when that same flame ignited inside him, and over a decade later, it was still there, smoldering. It would not be placated. “You know who killed her?” he asked, his voice strangled. 

“Corsicans.” She spat the word as though it were a curse. “Three men came to the house. I’ve spent the past two months trying to find out who they were.”

“And you came up with Corsica, how?” He was genuinely curious. Clearly, Golzine hadn’t sent his very best men – leaving an entire girl unscathed was a gross neglect of duty – but how did an elementary school student trace it back to the source?

She glared at him. “I asked the right questions,” she barked.

He must’ve flinched, because her demeanor immediately softened. “I’m sorry, Uncle. I know this must trouble you as much as me. Can I count on your help?”

Yut Lung didn’t know which part troubled him more – that she’d obviously traced the trail to Dino Golzine or that she existed at all? If she had found her way to Dino, was it possible that she could discover more, trace it all the way back to him? He quelled the sharp fear that stabbed his heart, reminding himself that she was the one in danger, not him.

His purpose was to exterminate the entire Lee lineage. He looked at Shen Lai, her tiny fists and pristine hair, the patent leather shoes that barely compressed the plush carpet. This tiny, fierce creature was a Lee. Already, he knew her. He understood her.

He would have to kill her.

*

Eiji Okumura froze in the doorway, the key dangling in his fingers. “What are you doing here?” he asked at once. “How did you get in?”

Yut Lung crossed his legs, settling back more comfortably in the hotel sofa. It had been a simple thing to find out where Eiji Okumura was staying. It was a decent hotel – not as nice as the apartment he’d shared with Ash, but certainly better than any other place he’d stayed during his time in the city. It took nothing at all to get into his room – a call to the desk for fresh towels, a quick slip through the door while the maid was in the bathroom. “You’re walking,” he observed. His eyes flicked to the wheelchair, folded up against the far wall. “Miraculous recovery?”

Eiji scowled. “Some days are worse than others,” he supplied tightly. He let the door close behind him, the few steps to the bed less graceful than usual. “What do you want? He is gone. There is nothing left for you to want from me.”

He wasn’t afraid. The realization startled Yut Lung. Even when Eiji had come to him in Chinatown, he’d been afraid. This new version of the Japanese man was unsettling, unsatisfying. But Yut Lung needed him. He needed to be reminded how to hate, what it took to channel rage into vengeance.

He pulled the pistol out of his bag – it was the same one he’d given Ash, the same one Ash had pressed to his own temple, willing to die for this ridiculous boy. The memory made Yut Lung queasy. He put the gun onto the coffee table in front of him. “I’m giving you the chance to even the score,” he said.

“You want me to shoot you?” Eiji didn’t move, leaning on headboard, his eyes unreadable in the shadows of the dimly-lit room.

“It’s only fair.” Emboldened, Yut Lung tossed the weapon onto the bed, well within Eiji’s reach. “A life for a life. Mine for Ash Lynx’s.”

Eiji visibly flinched at the mention of Ash’s name. He swallowed hard, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides the only evidence of an internal struggle. “I will not help you with this,” he said at last, his voice low. “I won’t release you.”

His refusal sparked something wild in Yut Lung. He jumped to his feet. “I killed him!” he cried. “In every way that matters, I murdered him!” It took three long strides to cross the room, to pluck the gun from the bed and push it into Eiji’s passive right hand. “Are you still too much of a coward to do what must be done?”

Eiji looked at the gun, his hand automatically gripping the handle, his index finger touching the trigger. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said at last. “Not because I am afraid, and not because, as you once said, I think I am too good to get blood on my hands.” He lifted the gun, aimed it at Yut Lung in an echo of their old standoff on streets of the East Side. “Ash is gone,” Eiji said, hollow. “I would have killed a thousand people to save just him, but,” he lowered the pistol, looking Yut Lung square in the eye. “I refuse to shoot even one for myself.”

He threw the gun back onto the bed, sliding it across the smooth coverlet until it bumped Yut Lung’s leg. “If you want to kill me, do it. If you want to be my enemy, fine. I will not be yours.”

Yut Lung stared at the gun, uncomprehending. Like the time he’d given it to Ash, it was unloaded. He’d planned to use it to unlock Eiji’s rage, to watch his hate blossom into vengeance. He’d intended to feed off of that, to use it as a life-preserver, pulling himself up out of his own emotional maelstrom. Thwarted, he shook his head, trying to clear it, to rediscover all his sharp edges and thorns, dulled since Ash died. “How can you not hate me?” he demanded.

Eiji laughed. It sounded like hearts breaking, like blood and tears and shattered glass. “I hate you,” he said in a dark voice. “I hate your face and your voice and the fact that you’re standing here instead of him. I hate the flowers on the trees, the kids in the park. I hate that spring has come without him.” He took a step toward the window, looked out at the city going on as it always did. “I hate absolutely everything,” Eiji said. “Even myself. Even Ash.”

Yut Lung saw that he was crying. Furious tears that he didn’t scrub away, didn’t bother to hide. “But it doesn’t matter.” His words cracked open. Bled. “All my hate, all my fury is nothing. Ash is gone and no amount of rage will bring him back.” He met Yut Lung’s horrified gaze, his face an expressionless mask. “Nothing will.”

*

Later, Yut Lung didn’t remember how he’d gotten the wine – if he’d ordered a servant to fetch it or if he’d made his way down to the cellar himself – only that it was numbing and plentiful. Bottle after bottle of red, of white, champagne or blush, until the world was claret-colored and sloshing. Only then could he sleep: deep, dreamless, and forgetful.

*

He woke determined. It was time to stop stalling. Stop doubting. Even without the rage, he had logic. He had a plan. He could do this. He grabbed a heavy feather pillow from his bed.

He was still a little drunk. He could tell by the way his slippers couldn’t seem to keep themselves steady as he put his feet into them. He found a not-quite-empty bottle on the dresser by the door and downed the leftovers before heading out into the hallway. Fortification.

She shouldn’t have come to New York. It was her own fault, really. 

Yut Lung crept down the dark hallway toward the other wing of the mansion. He’d put her in his former sister-in-law’s room. It was feminine, and she no longer needed it, after all.

Shen Lai had done her homework, followed the clues like a tiny little Inspector Poirot. She really shouldn’t have stopped when she discovered the Corsicans. There wasn’t any motive, no reason in the world that Dino Golzine or any other Corsican boss would ever want the entire Lee clan dead. And why not Yut Lung? He had been the secret Lee, but that secret was out the moment he’d come to New York. Even Nancy Drew could’ve figured that out.

She should’ve seen the reciprocation, the Corsican deaths that upset the power structure, the way they elevated Golzine’s status in the same way the massacre of the Lees elevated Yut Lung. It reeked of collusion. It was so obvious! 

Yut Lung stood outside Shen Lai’s door, trying to remember exactly what his plan had been. Oh, he knew he had to kill her, but he couldn’t remember how. Nothing messy, he hoped. He wasn’t afraid of legal repercussions – no one knew the girl was there, after all – but rather, he wanted to spare the servants the work. Removing a body was distasteful enough. After Shang Lung, he’d promised himself he’d avoid blood whenever possible. Then he noticed the pillow in his hands. Of course.

The doorknob was tricky, His fingers fumbled against the brass, unable to manage the proper grip. It occurred to him that he might be more than just a little drunk. It was okay, though. Shen Lai was just a little kid. No finesse required, right?

Finally getting the door open, he crept inside. With the curtains closed, the bedroom should’ve been nearly pitch-dark, but the girl had plugged a nightlight into the outlet next to the nightstand. The soft glow of a yellow Care Bear illuminated the area around the bed.

The effect was so disarming that Yut Lung faltered. A halo of golden light surrounded his niece. Shen Lai slept curled up, taking up only a fraction of the queen-sized bed. Her dark hair tangled across the pale pillowcase; her breaths were soft and kittenish, fluttering the lace edging of the sheets. 

Yut Lung leaned on the door frame, his pulse too quick in his ears. Unbidden, a memory of his mother emerged through the fog of his wine-soaked mind. There had been a thunderstorm, and he’d crawled into her bed, his ears ringing with the terror of it. She’d pulled him close and pressed her lips to his hair, soothing noises coming from deep in her throat. There, in Shen Lai’s room, Yut Lung felt like he could feel his mother’s arms around him, almost smell the echo of her orange-blossom perfume.

No more. He slid to the floor, pulling his knees up under his chin and clutching the pillow tightly. He was sick of all of it – death and blood and vengeance. He was tired of clinging to the things he hated. He was terrified he’d keep destroying the things he loved. He’d confused the tally, and he barely knew which was which anymore.

His mother was dead. The Lee clan. Shorter Wong. Ash Lynx.

 _Ash Lynx was dead_. A beacon in a fog-drenched night, suddenly extinguished. Eiji Okumura had already floundered. How many more would perish on the rocks because of him?

He staggered to his feet, his head thick with intoxication and shame. There would be time in the morning to figure out what to do with Shen Lai. To figure out what to do with himself. He closed his niece’s bedroom door and stumbled back down the hall. Tonight he wanted his bed. He wanted at least the illusion of safety, even while the storm still raged.

*

“Uncle?” Shen Lai’s soft voice reached him through a haze. He felt a cool hand on his face and his eyes cracked painfully open. It was day – light glowed like fire around the edges of the drapes and Yut Lung winced, folding his arm over his eyes.

A sour, thick fur seemed to coat in the inside of his mouth and his whole body ached like he’d been thrown down a staircase. He struggled against the heavy duvet that covered him, managing to sit up. He was in his room, in his bed. He blinked hard against the realization that he had no idea how he’d gotten there. “What day is it?” he rasped.

Shen Lai smiled, some of the worry in her face easing away. “It’s Wednesday. You’ve been sick since Sunday night.” She handed him a glass of water, which he took gratefully. 

Once his mouth and throat were feeling human again, Yut Lung was able to make a full inventory of bodily ills. His head was pounding – not a migraine this time, rather something that pulsed in time with his heartbeat – and his stomach couldn’t seem to decide if it were starved or queasy. In fact, all of his internal organs felt wrong, like they’d been jostled around and maybe fallen back into not-quite the right places. “Not sick,” he told the girl who watched him with wide eyes. “Drunk.”

She leaned back on her heels, folding her arms across her chest in a gesture of complete disapproval. “Drunk for three days is really bad,” she told him.

It was an oversimplification, but no less true for it. “Drunk for three days is the worst,” he confirmed. He reached up to smooth his hair but discovered it far too unruly for mere finger-combing. “Remember this when you’re old enough to drink.”

One eyebrow arched into Shen Lai’s perfectly level bangs. “Are _you_ old enough to drink?”

Yut Lung almost smiled. This girl was so like Sing. “Obviously.”

The silence that stretched between them turned awkward as Yut Lung’s memory of the night before came back to him. Or maybe it wasn’t the night before – he actually had no idea which night it had been. It crashed over him like waves on rocks, surging and retreating only to surge again. Each time he held onto another detail – a dense feather pillow, the smiling bear with a sun on its belly. Shame spiraled up from deep in his gut until he thought he might choke on it.

She had trusted him, come to him for help. She was just a kid who lost her mother, the same as him.

The same as him.

“Uncle,” she began tentatively, her finger and thumb worrying a hangnail on the other hand. “I’ve been here nearly a week. You’ve given me no answer.” She looked at her feet for a fortifying moment and then met his bleary eyes. “Will you help me kill Dino Golzine or not?”

She blamed Golzine. He should let her, let this end there. She need never know about their deal, about the motive behind every Lee death. He had already decided to let her live – surely that would be enough to root out the guilt that roiled within his chest just looking at her? “Monsieur Golzine is already dead,” he told her. “He died in a fire a few weeks ago.”

The shock on her face quickly changed to confusion. “Are you sure?” Shen Lai asked. “He is really dead?”

Yut Lung nodded, remembering Sing’s description of the event, how he’d survived a gunshot wound only to fall from a height that must’ve been fatal. Even if it weren’t, the fire consumed him soon afterward. It wasn’t a good death, either way. “He suffered,” Yut Lung told her and watched grim satisfaction settle into her expression. It was a strange look for a kid, and he thought it was how she might look in a dozen years.

It occurred to him that he must have looked just like that – a scarred and grizzled soul in the face of child. It was the face of someone who knew that the boogieman was real. Yut Lung watched as tears overflowed her eyes and rolled down her flushed cheeks, and he tried to understand her feelings, that bitter mixture of disappointment and relief so plain in her.

He’d never felt that. Even when Golzine told him it was done, all he felt was obligation. Now there was someone new dogging his steps, someone else he had to trust with the ruinous secrets of his life. By the time Golzine was killed there was no room for relief, only rage – rage at Blanca for leaving him, at Ash for making him go, at Eiji for existing.

And now – what? He studied Shen Lai, knowing that, while he’d never be able to kill her, that didn’t mean they belonged to each other, did it? He was, by only the smallest remove, the very assassin who destroyed her world. The weren’t bound by anything more than the bad fortune of blood. 

And yet.

She seemed very small, and Yut Lung remembered being small. He remembered craving kindness. She was as alone as he’d been. As alone as he still was.

He pulled a handkerchief from his bedside table, gave it to her for her tears.

*

It was raining again. Yut Lung sat by the window, looking out at the courtyard. The magnolia tree was in bloom, its pink blossoms radiant in the grey-filtered light. The grass had turned green when he wasn’t looking – nothing of winter remained in the garden. He watched the raindrops bead on the windowpane, listened to the soft roar of them on the tiled roof.

“Still sulking?”

He turned from the glass, startled. No one had announced Sing’s arrival; he hadn’t even noticed him enter the room. Yut Lung’s heart hammered in his chest. “I thought you weren’t coming back?” The haughty tone in his voice was only an echo of what it could have been.

Sing crossed the room, and Yut Lung noticed that he was wearing those bright, ridiculous shoes again. Something about that felt good, though he had no idea why. Sing threw himself down on the sofa seeming not dissatisfied, but like a parody of dissatisfaction. He picked at a thread in the brocade, and Yut Lung waited. Sing never did anything for no reason – coming there today was no exception.

“I met your niece,” he said at last. “She’s the one who let me in here.” That explained the lack of an announcement, at least. “She’s a cute kid.”

Yut Lung sniffed, hiding a smile. What was cute was Sing trying to pretend he was so much older than Shen Lai. “Yes, she’s adorable,” he said impatiently. Not that he minded talking about her; the impatience was a habit – one Sing tended to indulge.

His crooked smile was Yut Lung’s reward. “She’s like you – half silk and half venom.”

Venom. Sing wouldn’t be the first to call him a snake, if that’s what he meant. Something collapsed inside him, his buoyancy slipping away and casting him back down toward the darkness. “We can’t all be sunshine and roses like your friend Eiji Okumura,” he snapped. Not that he was either of those things anymore. One more thing to lay at Yut Lung’s feet, no doubt. One more catastrophe that Sing could hate him for. 

Sing raised his hands in the universal sign of non-aggression. “I’m not here to fight,” he insisted.

“So why are you here?” Dozens of possible answers to that question bombarded him all at once and Yut Lung couldn’t hold his careless pose a moment longer. He hunched into himself, crossing his arms around his torso.

Sing sighed. He scratched his head, looking so like Shorter Wong that it caused something to clench in Yut Lung’s chest. “I was worried,” he confessed. “I mean, you deserved every rotten thing I said, but–” he cut himself off, taking a second to mull over his words. “I dunno. I can’t help worrying about you.”

“Why would you bother?” It was supposed to sound flippant. It didn’t.

Shrugging, Sing looked everywhere but at Yut Lung, his dark eyes darting like minnows in a pool. “I guess,” he said, his gaze settling on his feet. “I guess someone’s got to.”

His answer felt like sunshine, like the scent of orange blossoms, but it bounced against something dark and guilty. Yut Lung didn’t deserve Sing’s concern. He wanted to dump it all out, dirty up Sing’s pretty shoes with the rotting truth of himself. He’d never claimed to be an angel, but once Sing knew how far he’d fallen, he’d never come back again. And isn’t that what he deserved?

“I got really drunk and almost smothered Shen Lai,” he confessed, the words spilling out of him before he’d even made up his mind to speak.

Sing’s eyes shot up, the gentle expression Yut Lung hadn’t known was on his face immediately replaced by outrage. “You did what?” he demanded.

Yut Lung felt like a fool, too honest by half and drowning in his own folly. But the dam had cracked, and it all came rushing out – the truth about the Lees and his mother. The shame of those awful nights of torn pajamas and panting breath. He explained the details Sing hadn’t known about his pact with Golzine – fratricide and wives and children and every last Lee wiped off the face of the earth. 

“But Shen Lai was all alone,” he said at last, tears streaming down his face. “She was alone and full of hate and I understood her. I recognized her the same way I’d recognize my own handwriting.” She was broken and twisted and it was completely his fault. “I did to her what they did to me,” he said, exhausted.

Sing’s gaze was steady. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Yut Lung demanded. “I turned her into a monster, just like me.”

He shook his head. “That girl is hurt. She’s angry. But she’s not a monster – not yet.” His mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “You were alone too long. It’s made you bitter. But she has you, right?”

Yut Lung thought about the little girl in the other room. Hadn’t he been wondering if, maybe someday they could belong to each other for real? Family in more than just name? Sing seemed to think so. “I don’t know how to do this,” he said softly. “It’s been really hard.”

And he wasn’t talking about Shen Lai now, not really. “I mean, I know that it’s all my own fault. That everything fell apart because of me.” 

Sing’s gaze softened. His eyes narrowed. “Not everything’s your fault,” he said. “There are things I could’ve done. There are things Ash could’ve done.”

“No.” For the barest second, Sing shifted forward, like he was going to argue, but then he relaxed back onto the couch and Yut Lung’s interjection hung there, uncontested.

“I don’t know how to move forward,” Yut Lung whispered. 

“Every day, do one thing better than you did yesterday,” Sing told him. It wasn’t flippant. It wasn’t placating. Sing did lean toward him now, his face open, for once not hiding behind a scowl or a smirk. In his whole life, Yut Lung had never seen such an honest expression. This boy was more than just the kid boss of Chinatown, more than just someone he could push around. Sing knew his secrets.

Maybe someday he’d even know the one thing Yut Lung had held back – how Ash Lynx had made him feel like the whole universe was expanding inside him. Maybe, by then, losing him wouldn’t feel like a lead weight on his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. He swallowed a lump in his throat. “It can’t be that easy.”

“It won’t be.” Sing’s voice was low. Serious. “But–” He faltered, picking up a blown glass bowl from the end table, running his fingers around the scalloped edges. His cheeks colored and he looked away. “But you’re not alone anymore.”

It was still raining outside, still grey. Yut Lung’s life was a snarl he might never fully untangle. But he thought that probably it wasn’t just Shen Lai that Sing was talking about. Probably, it was him, too. And that felt – good.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a short story by Ernest Hemingway. I've never read the story, so if there are parallels, that's entirely coincidental. If there are not, well, that's to be expected. :)
> 
> Also, Shen Lai is meant to mean "beautiful dawn." This is not just an echo of Ash's name, but also an beacon for Yut Lung's own emergence from darkness.


End file.
